


Now That I’m Here (Don’t Close Your Eyes)

by ShadowsLament



Category: Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them (Movies)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-12-05
Updated: 2016-12-22
Packaged: 2018-09-06 15:06:09
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 6,166
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8757409
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ShadowsLament/pseuds/ShadowsLament
Summary: Newt’s role in unmasking Grindelwald has awoken something older, something darker.





	1. Chapter 1

The apartment was shadows given shape in dark wood and darker leather, the east-facing windows shielded by black brocade curtains draped over ebony rods. Edison bulbs lit the interior in the manner of a midwinter lightning storm, providing little relief if energy to burn. He’d been told, once, that it was as though he’d confined his melancholy to his home, like one might lock an unwanted, unwound living memory in an attic.

Graves had held his mother’s conscientious stare as he smiled, his teeth on display in the way of wolves and Aurors. “Joy such as mine must be dimmed, mother. If for no other reason than for the sake of those less fortunate.”

His words--unwarranted, the result of an utterly exhausting week-long effort to hold pyromaniacal members of the NSPS at bay--were met with rightful silence. The next day he found her rebuke on his doorstep: playfully rounded clusters of paper-white flowers, similar in size to the rubber balls he regularly witnessed No-Maj children bounce off of brick walls. The petals would show like stars in the perpetual night of his rooms. 

He had deposited the pot on the floor, where the bulk of his bed would hide the blooms from sight. 

From what he understood of the time he’d been imprisoned, it was hardly a surprise, then, when Newt Scamander found them. “These are Allium amplectens,” he said, gently rapping the pot with his knuckles, “of the ‘Graceful’ variety.”

“Mr. Scamander,” Graves said, “what, exactly, are you doing in my bedroom?”

“You let me in?” Newt tugged at the cuff of his coat sleeve, intent on the flowers. “These require sunlight to survive. They prefer summer. Barring that, spring.”

“There is one other acceptable substitute.” When Newt’s head lifted, tilted in his direction, Graves concluded with, “Magic.”

“He knew that,” Newt mumbled, to himself or to the flowers, “about the seasons.” He looked up, met Graves’ eyes. “You’ve taken care of them. For quite some time, is my guess.”

Graves glanced at the unwavering stems, bright as absinthe in a bottle. “They’ve done nothing to deserve death.” He turned from the room. “This way.”

The button back armchair Graves indicated Newt should sit in appeared to perplex him: He shifted on the wide leather seat, leaning on one hip before quickly opting for the other, repeating the routine twice more. In spite of their length, how easily he might have rested an elbow on either side of the chair, his arms remained pinned to his body. Graves watched, narrow-eyed, as Newt tucked both hands beneath his legs.

Settled, insomuch as Graves suspected he ever could be, Newt’s nomadic gaze shifted to the exposed pipelines on the wall and the rows of books that ran like steam or water across one before descending to another below. “Why is it?”

“Why is what?” 

“I suspect the meager light is because of the headaches?” Newt hesitated, and Graves understood the man was taking the measure of his sudden stillness. Nodding--and, again, the action seemed to be for no one’s benefit but his own--Newt explained, “You are fastidious, a trait people have been known to observe as vanity, and so the tip of your middle finger pacing there, just above your right eyebrow, might be mistaken as merely smoothing the line. That is not the case, is it, Mr. Graves?”

“It is not a fleeting acquaintance I share with vanity, Mr--”

“Newt. And, yes, that may be true, but it is not your own. For all that you could be,” Newt said quietly, “you are not.”

Graves sat back in his chair, a mirror twin to the one Newt uneasily perched in, and studied the lines set in rings around his guest’s sheepish smile. A sudden urge to test the veracity of the dusting of freckles over those pale cheeks clung to his thoughts. “Should you grow tired of your beasts, you could have a storied career in espionage.”

“I shudder to think of it.” Newt’s dimples deepened momentarily. “I could help, maybe. With the headaches.”

“Something to consider,” Graves hedged. “But you didn’t knock on my door to offer medical assistance. What can I do for you...Newt?”

Newt sprang up from his seat and before the sole of his boot renewed acquaintance with the hardwood floor, stalled. The expression he wore was etched with the hard-earned realization that it was, perhaps, unwise to move quite so quickly in front of a predator. “In your vest pocket,” Newt said, making abortive hand gestures towards the item of clothing in question, “I’m afraid you’ve got a stowaway.”

“Do I now?” Graves patted the pocket, lightly, and found the material stretched slightly over something as small and narrow as a twig. He hummed a melody in a low register, the lullaby one he’d picked up during his early years at Ilvermorny, and stroked a fingertip down the compact line the creature made. “Let’s see your face, shall we, little one?”

“He doesn’t care for being patroniz--Oh.” 

The Bowtruckle worked itself up and out of Graves’ pocket to step onto his open hand. It sat unceremoniously in the center of his palm and waved at Newt. 

“I was worried, Pickett,” Newt said simply. “He has never willingly left my own pocket before, you see, Mr--”

“Graves will do.” He slowly lifted his hand, felt the breeze-borne shiver that wracked the tiny body of the Bowtruckle through the clutching tips of its twig-like fingers on his skin. “Does it require anything? Water?”

“Pickett?”

The creature’s two leaves shook, side to side. Small mouth rounding on a yawn, it slipped to its side on Graves’ palm, drawing in limbs as lanky as Newt’s. Before both eyes closed it stuck a green tongue out in Newt’s direction.

“He has manners when it suits him,” Newt said. “If you would like to free your hand, I’ll--”

“After he’s made himself comfortable?” Graves rested his knuckles on the padded arm of the chair, transferring his gaze to Newt, who seemingly hadn’t managed to decide if he should reclaim his seat or hover like a parent reluctant to let his child out of sight in an unfamiliar den. “If you would sit, you might tell me how you knew where to find him.”

“I’ve been out of my case just once this morning, when I visited with Tina--“

“At headquarters,” Graves acknowledged, recalling a flap of petrol blue against Newt’s knee as the man hastened from the building.

Newt nodded. “When I realized he was not on my person, nor on his tree, I went to see Tina. As you know, he wasn’t there with her, either.”

“And you thought to seek me out because--”

“Well, of something Tina said, really, which was that she had noticed Pickett…that he had been…”

Graves waited, his brow raised, while Newt plucked at a button embedded in the seat cushion with his thumbnail. “Newt?”

“Pickett was staring.” Paused in the act of buffing the button he’d been laboring against, Newt cleared his throat. “At you, after you’d stepped out from the elevator,” he clarified. “Those manners I mentioned have been entirely absent today, for which you have my sincerest apologies.”

“Unnecessary.” The little creature stirred, shifting to spread out across Graves’ palm. The curl of one leaf was similar enough to the spill of Newt’s hair over his forehead that Graves had to smile, slightly, as a soft snore sent it sailing. “I see now why you keep him close.”

“Pardon?”

“Gnarlack.” Graves absorbed Newt’s reflexive recoil, the thin press of his mouth. “Ms. Goldstein’s report indicated you--”

“Yes, that’s right, but I deemed it a necessary risk, quite certain I could get him back. And--”

“You did,” Graves reminded him, nodding down at the evidence slumbering still in the cup of his hand. “Are Bowtruckles capable of picking enchanted locks?”

Newt’s brow pinched but his answer came swiftly. “Without a wizard’s assistance, no. Their magic is primarily based in their camouflage, enabling them to protect the trees they claim as a home.”

“And you have others, I assume, in your case?”

“Last I looked,” Newt said, sitting up straight, with a stare that picked its way over Graves’ furnishings--the chest bound by myriad straps; the desk on which a painstakingly polished, golden Gordian Knot winked beneath the light cast by a restless Anglepoise--to the door. “Yes.”

In the tone of the lullaby, Graves promised, “It was a question, no more.” He stood slowly and crossed the floor to rest on his haunches in front of Newt, his thumb skimming over the loose fist the man had made of his hand. Pleased when long, slim fingers uncurled for him, Graves carefully replaced Pickett on Newt’s palm. “Will you have coffee?” 

“What?” Newt blinked, cradling Pickett against his stomach. “That is, I didn’t intend to be a bother, and as we’ve already inconvenienced you--”

“I offered,” Graves interrupted, “which suggests I find myself neither bothered nor inconvenienced. If you prefer tea, I have that as well.”

“Coffee, then. Please.”

Graves moved into the black marble corner that served as both kitchen and dining room. “The last time Theseus was here he wouldn’t touch the stuff.”

“That is likely my fault.” Newt wound over to the books, perusing the shelves with his free hand. “When I last left Uagadou, it was with beans in my possession that were, in retrospect, not meant to initiate someone into the pleasures of a full cup.”

The familiar task of grinding and brewing was executed with an eye towards Newt and his curious fingers, smoothing over spines cracked by an abundance of sleepless nights, plucking at slips of papers--letters, in and out of envelopes--pressed between back-to-back covers. He lingered in front of a novel faced out on the shelf, darting a glance at Graves before peeking beneath the pristine jacket at the title page. 

“Have you read it?” Graves asked, imprinting on his memory the blush that scorched Newt’s skin. His startled eyes: open wide and thickly lashed, a vivid green. The color, if not the exact shade, Graves realized, ran through the family line. 

“I haven’t,” Newt finally answered, “but I believe this to be the author’s hand, and here he has thanked you for inspiring the final title.” Graves was beginning to believe, as the man traced the stylized serifs on the page, that he would be able to pick out Newt’s puzzled frown in the pitch dark of a forest. “The first part of it is rather obvious, it’s the second that--Did he have reason to believe you are damned?”

“I suppose,” Graves conceded. “Scott, like yourself, is a keen observer.” Joining Newt in front of his shelves, he offered his guest a black cup with a thin circle of starlight silver around the rim, fragrant steam spiraling up like a specter from the coffee’s unsweetened surface. Graves waited until the tradeoff of the handle was nearly managed and said, “You find me beautiful?”

The coffee moved like a dark sea in turmoil, furiously lapping against the interior of the cup until Newt’s hold on it steadied. A hasty swallow resulted in a distinct wince from the shock of unrelieved heat. “Good,” Newt said, his voice choked by the strain of producing it so quickly after a mild trauma, “it’s good, really excellent coffee. Strong and, and--Thank you.”

Graves smiled, not bothering with the fetters he so often applied to temper the curve.

“Yes,” Newt whispered then, unshuttered interest in the eyes he fastened on Graves’ mouth. “Just now, especially.” Time abandoned its mooring until Newt dropped his gaze to the floor, shuffling his foot before turning on his heel. He walked over to Graves’ writing desk and picked up a book with MACUSA files tucked between the pages. “I noticed you have several translations of this fellow’s work. And there’s a letter from the German Ministry of Magic on top of Grindelwald’s file.”

With Newt’s attention focused on the contents of the book, Graves smoothed out the vicious edge that cut across his face and curled his lip. The name was both kerosene and match, igniting the latent headache he’d taken away like a kind of souvenir from his imprisonment. 

“Generally,” he said, reclaiming his seat, “spies don’t announce to their targets what they’ve found.” He waved off the volley of Newt’s stammered objections, his smile mostly in place. “I had some time to pick apart the problem of how Grindelwald might conceivably gain control of the Obscurial’s magic. As you know, it’s no easy--”

“Feat,” Newt finished for him. “I was able to secure it, once, but anything beyond that was out of the question.”

“The man who wrote that book was himself an Obscurial. When the German Ministry eventually became aware of him,” Graves said, “he was more than twice Credence’s age.”

Newt sat on the edge of the second armchair, Pickett staring out from behind his lapel. “That shouldn’t be possible.”

“The Ministry has been trying to get to the bottom of his system, how he contained the energy. The way they see it, it was tied to his writing.”

“This man--Kafka--hasn’t provided any instructive information?”

Graves shook his head. “He was already in a state of advanced decline. He passed on in ’24.”

“I see,” Newt said quietly. “And you’re attempting to--What, exactly?”

“Grindelwald will try again,” Graves said. “Before he does, I want to have every scrap of relevant information in hand, anything I can use to stop him.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I couldn't step into 1920s America and not slip a few references in the mix. (Just in case: Scott = F. Scott Fitzgerald, and the title Newt noted as being inspired by Graves is The Beautiful and Damned.) Thank you for reading!
> 
> Kudos and comments are thoroughly appreciated.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> To everyone who left a comment on the first chapter, thank you. When doubts creep up and tap my back (so often, let me tell you), I return to the lovely words you've left on my work and feel bolstered. Now, I hope you all don't mind sloooow burn.

With the slight notion that he was headed away from Graves’ residence along the correct path to return to his own, Newt ducked beneath a low-hanging branch, his thoughts strung along the minutes of the previous hour.

“ _Correct me if I’m mistaken, but aren’t Directors of Magical Security meant to be…tightlipped?_ ”

Had Newt harbored a shred of doubt as to Graves’ acuity after his ordeal, the dark eyes the man had set on his face would have replaced it with a tidy bit of ash. “ _You’ll simply have to restrain yourself from betraying me._ ” 

Newt had never in his life nodded so swiftly, he imagined. Nor, he was fairly certain, had he ever attempted to reassure anyone quite so unequivocally. And that was all before hearing Graves’ response: a laugh so low and rich it rivaled the exquisite coffee he’d kept warm for Newt as they spoke, while Newt’s mind and hands wandered to the objects perched like nested birds of prey in the notches and nooks of Graves’ home. 

It was all slightly hazy, what he might have said or done after he shook himself from the dream of Graves’ warm humor, after the furnace fire heat of his skin when their hands met upon parting. Newt recalled Pickett chirping and tugging on his lapel, apparently reluctant to leave, and the almost fond expression Graves wore when he reached out to bid the preening Bowtruckle goodnight. 

“Of course I can’t be absolutely positive what I was expecting,” Newt admitted, “but, really, what _did_ happen couldn’t have been it.” He glanced down to catch Pickett’s smug expression, arms covered in prickly trichomes folded strictly across his narrow center. “Keep that up and you won’t be my favorite much longer.”

Pickett grudgingly settled, slipping deeper into Newt’s pocket, where he made room for himself against a pocket guide to New York sidewalks. The bark-brown leather cover had been slightly worse for wear after being tossed in a bin behind the public library, but a quick dusting off sufficed to make it nearly good as new. Not consulting the book before setting out might have been an error in judgement, Newt concluded, as a quick look around revealed he’d left stately stacked bricks and dim windows behind. 

To rectify the situation just then would require disturbing Pickett. 

Newt lowered his head and kept walking, his thoughts drifting back to the matter of Graves’ confident ease. The man’s unerring ability to trigger the heightened state between fight or flight, when Newt’s heart beat was loudest to his own ears. It wasn’t such a stretch to believe Graves was the same breed of wolf as his city: bright and watchful, sharp teeth and claws sheathed in unexpected charm, in a candor that was mirrored in the white shirts and sheets drying high above, on the lines Newt had seen drawn between buildings parted by side streets and tight alleys respectively.

Stooped to separate his untied bootlace from a torn Mallo Milk candy wrapper, Newt reasoned, “Humans truly--” His gaze was arrested by an odd shadow playing across the pavement when the cloud cover broke and there was the moon, wide as a shining coin overhead. “They are--”

Newt snapped his mouth shut and listened, certain he had heard a noise--one as thin as a high-pitched whistle--similar to those used to attract dogs and drunken Abraxans. Without his instincts, Newt would not have lasted the course of a day in his chosen profession; he did as they dictated when the sound came again. Dropping flush to the ground, Newt rolled over loose dirt and brittle leaves to the thick base of a tree. 

The sound followed and slashed and moments later a scent like wet metal or fresh blood tainted drastically colder air.

Tearing at his coat to retrieve his wand, Newt latched onto a location and braced against the tearing grasp of Apparition. He landed with force on a hardwood floor, his gasp breaking the silence like a gramophone needle yanked across a revolving record.

“Newt?”

His eyes focused on bare feet, on the silk hem of black pyjama pants. “P-pardon me, Graves.” Newt licked his lips. “You were the only destination that came to mind.”

“Forget that.” Graves knelt at Newt’s side. “Tell me why you’re bleeding.”

The acidic sting he’d felt hadn’t been imagined, then. Newt reached up to find his skin parted along the trailing line of his cheekbone. His fingertips came away from the spot wet, stained a color too dark to be written off as red. “That explains the smell.”

“Newt,” Graves said again, a growl somehow crouched there behind the vowel, “what happened?”

“I’m not entirely sure,” Newt began, blindly accepting Graves’ hand when the man reached down to assist him in standing. “I was walking, noticed I had gotten somewhat lost as I’d been thinking about-- never mind that. There was a candy wrapper, and my bootlace was untied, and this sound, very much like a dog whistle.”

“And?”

“Well,” Newt sat on the edge of Graves’ bed, “that accounts for the sum of it.”

Across the room, Graves pulled open a drawer and rummaged through the contents. “There was a sound, but you saw nothing?”

“A shadow, on the pavement. It was strange, bent at an angle that is common to trees, not humans, not even those of an older age. If not for that,” Newt said, “I might not have taken notice of it. It possibly--likely, in fact--has nothing whatsoever to do with this, except it was the only thing out of place.” His eyes met Graves’ and stumbled. Determined to maintain contact, Newt righted his stare. The dark, as it were, had never been a place he feared. “Its appearance immediately preceded the noise.”

The handkerchief Graves used to gently blot away the blood had a round of tight stitches at one corner, Newt noted, in cranberry hued thread. An observation that would have been entirely unremarkable had the embroidered initials belonged to him. 

“And this happened, how?”

“I couldn’t say,” Newt told him. 

Graves traced the length of the injury with his wand, a familiar incantation kept beneath his breath. Newt was aware of heat, a kind of tension on his skin as it knit together, and of Graves’ light touch at his jaw. 

“If it was a creature, I’m going to take for granted it’s not one you’re aware of.” Absently--as it had to be absently done, Newt decided--Graves brushed his thumb over the newly healed skin. The rhythm was soothing, marred only by Newt’s quickening pulse. “If it was a wizard—“

“It wasn’t _him_. At least,” Newt said, “I don’t believe it was. I’ll grant you my exposure to the magic was brief, but nonetheless it did not feel the same as his.”

Graves was silent and unmoving for several interminably long moments before his shoulders relaxed, before the pacing of his thumb resumed and lengthened to catch the corner of Newt’s parted mouth. “Regardless of who is responsible, I will find him. We’ll get answers.”

“Graves, I--I really am sorry for intruding. Again.”

“Under the circumstances,” Graves said, “would you consider spending the night?”

“What?” Newt asked, blinking so rapidly Graves surely wondered about the breeze. “Here?”

“Yes, here, and it looks like the little one has decided it for you.” A nod towards the head of the bed had Newt spinning in place, clutching the plush bedding. Pickett was snoring, curled up on Graves’ pillow. “You take the bed," Graves offered. "I’ve used the sofa before.”

“But my case, I really can’t just leave it at--”

“Kowalski's?” From his dresser, Graves pulled out a pair of pinstriped pyjama pants. Tossed them on the mattress. “Assuming you’ve secured the locks, it should be safe enough. But if it would make you feel more comfortable, I could retrieve--”

“No, no, that’s quite alright,” Newt insisted, shoving a slightly shaking hand through the hair flopped over his forehead. “Wouldn’t want to scare Jacob out of his mind at any hour, let alone this one. Whichever that may be.”

Graves shook his head, smiling in that way he had before, when it had nearly cost him a rather lovely coffee cup. “You have no idea how long you’d been walking?”

“Theseus timed me once,” Newt said, “after I told him I planned to pop out for a treat, quick as anything.” He glanced up, attempting to keep from wringing his hands. “He could tell you to the exact minute, still, after all these years, but the gist of it was well over three hours.”

“I can only imagine what you got up to. Or rather,” Graves said, his smile turned sly, much closer to a grin, “how many creatures it involved.” 

Newt nodded, and tried not to stare as Graves took an extra pillow from a deep closet hidden behind a portion of the wall. He crossed to the nightstand and the tidy tower of books rising up from that flat surface. The one at the top was open, set down so the pages kissed the cover beneath and the spine was wholly visible to the ceiling. Graves took up the book, a lined ledger, its paper the color of thick cream, and a sleek fountain pen that was silver leaf over onyx.

“Should you need anything,” Graves said, on his way to the bedroom door, “I’ll be one floor up, in the library.”

“You mean there are still more books?”

“Among other things.” At the threshold Graves paused, his free hand on the jamb. “Good night, Newt.” 

“S-sleep well, Graves.”


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you all for joining me once again. I hope you enjoy this update. As always, kudos and comments are beyond appreciated.

Graves threw off the blanket--damp with sweat, wrinkles in the knit where it had wrapped tight as a contracted coil around his legs--to sit on the sofa’s ledge. He’d left his bedroom on bare feet, not that he could have known an unexpectedly steep drop in temperature would render his polished floor into ice, nor how long Newt might sleep.

An openhanded gesture towards the fireplace kindled the seasoned hardwood on the grate; the flames quickly lifted, swaying in a show of brilliant sunrise shades otherwise absent from the morning’s winter white sky. Frost, he noticed, had set its breath to several window panes. 

The weather, then, had likewise decided to mourn his lack of restful sleep. 

Padding over to the nearest table and the relief of the Sarouk rug beneath, Graves nudged aside a cascade of mail, opened and sealed, to take up the nearly empty tin of Bayer-Tablets of Aspirin. The pills were hardly more effective than all the spells the mediwizards had tried to expel the headaches, but doing something, anything, was preferable to sitting around with his hands all but tied behind his back while the pain struck like a detonated mortar bomb. He took three and tossed the tin on a patent application for transporting sulfur.

“Those aren’t working, are they?” Newt’s voice carried over from where he stood at the top of the stairs. “Good morning, Graves.”

“Is that--What is that? Scones?” Graves asked, eyeing the silver tray Newt balanced on both palms.

“Yes, and lemon curd, clotted cream,” Newt said. “I’ve brought your slippers as well.”

Graves took the tray from Newt, set it down on an open ledger covered in the narrow loops and sloping lines of his handwriting. “All that’s missing is coffee.”

“Oh, it wasn’t ready just yet.”

There were napkins beneath the plates, folded precisely. “How did you manage all this?”

“Pickett snores. Loudly,” Newt explained. “Without my case, there was little else I could do to pass the time. I hope you don’t mind my use of your kitchen?”

“You didn’t have to--”

“No, I suppose I didn’t. But I wanted to,” Newt insisted quietly. He produced Graves’ slippers from an interior pocket of his coat and placed them on the floor, careful to keep his eyes turned away from the official detritus on the table. His curious gaze instead climbed the shelves, taking note of the rolling ladder tucked in a far corner, and lingered on various pieces of equipment: brass theodolites, golden telescopes, an orrery and astrarium. “Among other things.”

Wide-eyed and openmouthed, Newt continued his floor to ceiling study of the room while Graves sampled the food and took a letter opener to an envelope postmarked from Mahoutokoro. “Grindelwald has reached international crisis status.”

“If he traveled here,” Newt said, “it stands to reason he would seek asylum in another country not his own.”

“He’s not going to find it in Japan.” 

Newt circled a cage-like structure with a narrow metal pole rising from the center, topped by a small sphere. “What is this?”

“It’s a prototype of a magnifying transmitter.” The mail in sorted piles on the table, Graves turned his attention to a brief memo stamped with Picquery’s strict signature. “Several years ago, the press took to calling a Serbian inventor a wizard. Precursors to the NSPS latched on, sent their people in to sabotage his demonstrations. MACUSA got involved, and that was one of the items confiscated for testing. It was going to be destroyed.”

Newt’s silent appraisal of the transmitter seemed to sharpen and expand to include Graves, but when he finally spoke, it was to ask, “Will you be needing me this morning? At HQ, I mean. Tina indicated reports must be filed for...everything, actually.”

A smear of deep red on pale, freckled skin had followed Graves into the dark tangle of his dreams. He nodded once, shortly. “If you can spare the time.”

“I’d like to retrieve my case,” Newt said. “Perhaps we could stop by Jacob’s. It’s not on the way, exactly, but--”

“Give me a moment to dress and we’ll go. There’s an Apparition spot not far from here.”

Newt was leaning over a horologium nocturnal, index fingertip testing the time-telling arm, when Graves took the stairs down to his bedroom. Inside the recess of his closet, the light hummed and flared brighter so as not to be swallowed by all the black: vests and slacks, sweaters and coats. 

Graves made quick work of pulling on tailored wool and smooth cashmere, his mind on the man upstairs. The timing and location of the attack was troubling: Alone and isolated, Newt had been walking away from street lamps into thick trees and a late hour. While the odds might lean in favor of a random event, something about the tucked away shadow Newt noticed read as deliberate. Suggested tracking, a hunt. The memo from Picquery confirming there'd been no other reports of similar attacks in recent days only strengthened his supposition.

A quick adjustment to the scorpion pins on his shirt’s collar before exiting the closet, Graves then reset the wall and moved to the bed. Lightly tapping the pillow to wake Pickett, he offered his hand after the Bowtruckle had blinked open small eyes and stretched. “Hurry, little one. Newt is waiting.”

Clambering to stand, Pickett hurried onto Graves’ palm and eagerly climbed the length of his arm to settle on his shoulder. 

“And what did you see last night?” Graves detoured into the kitchen, prepared two cups of coffee while Pickett chittered. Agitation came across loud and clear in the tone and gestures, and for that reason alone Graves regretted that of all the translation spells he knew, none covered creatures. “I’ll keep him safe,” he heard himself promise, when the Bowtruckle had wound down, slumping on Graves’ shoulder in a manner indicating Newt’s little protector had used up a large measure of energy on his tale. “And you.”

In the library, Graves found Newt standing on the top wrung of the ladder, the majority of his long frame already through the trapdoor in the ceiling. He ducked back down, smiling widely. “It’s remarkable up here. Did you do this?”

“Yes, over time.” Graves lifted one of the coffee cups, watched as Newt scrambled down the ladder, his steps on the treads snapping at a volume louder than the automobile horn barking across the street. “Newt,” he said, relinquishing the cup to the man’s eager grasp, “since your return, have you experienced even a moment when something felt off?”

“Off?” Newt blew out a breath over the coffee, pushing the steam across the rippling surface so it mimicked mist rolling over surf. He took a careful sip, his eyes slipping shut for a fraction of a second. “If you are asking whether or not it felt like I was at any point being followed, no. Though I believe that changed last night.”

Graves drained his cup down to the aromatic dregs and left it on a kraft paper bag branded with Brentano’s globe, the unfurled banner touting the store’s services as a worldwide bookseller. “Can you understand Pickett?”

“You mean apart from rudimentary gestures and tones and such?” At Graves’ answering nod, Newt set his gaze on the middle distance. “Along with others working within my department at the Ministry, I once made several attempts at creating a charm for the purpose of translation. There are myriad variables, an incalculable number of ways a spell of that kind could go wrong. When I left, it still had not phased out of the highly experimental stage.” Newt shook himself, the forward sweep of his hair glancing over his eyes. “Why do you ask?”

“Pickett had a story to tell.” Graves pointed at the ceiling; the trapdoor soundlessly swung shut. The path his hand carved out of the air tugged the ladder along in its wake, securing it to one corner. “The emotion was clear.” Pocketing his ledger with two letters tucked inside, the aspirin tin, and a pair of black leather gloves taken from inside a discarded pneumatic tube, Graves said, “I could only guess at the rest, and wouldn’t hold my interpretation up to scrutiny.”

“You wanted his version of last evening’s events,” Newt guessed, following close on Graves’ heels down the stairs. “I hadn’t considered that.”

“You got the two of you here, relatively unscathed. Keep your mind on that,” Graves said, and urged Pickett into the warmth of his coat’s pocket. 

They stepped outside to a snow globe scene: Powder-light snow coating striped awnings, ornate railings, and the sidewalk. Bare ice stretched like silver tinsel down the street, cracked and chipped near the curb where someone had halfheartedly taken a shovel to it. Their breath manifested in the air, transparent as extinguished dragons’ fire dispersed by a cold wind.

Newt wound the length of his scarf around his throat. “This should be fun.”

Graves had weathered worse alongside his city: the occasional hurricane that threatened to drown Central Park, to tear down the wires strung along the blocks like Ariadne’s thread, if the girl had known how to weave a Cat’s Cradle; the more frequent blizzards, heavy snow packed high as mausoleum bricks, choking off familiar routes and avenues to basic necessities. The way New York came to life throughout it all, he could appreciate that kind of passion.

“Mind your step,” Graves said, and set off across the street. 

They passed shivering saplings, trash cans with lids frozen in place. Children congregated on front stoops, clumsily scooping up small handfuls of snow, their thick mittens making the task of compacting it for tossing a chore none of them seemed to mind. 

“Did you ever do that?” Newt asked. “Snowball fights? Angel-making?” 

Graves glanced back as the children howled with laughter, snow on their noses and in the wisps of hair escaping from their hats. “Fort building.”

“I’ve always been partial to snowmen,” Newt said, “though come to think of it, they always more closely resembled a Mooncalf. I even once used Mother’s best China saucers for the eyes. Admittedly not the best idea I’ve ever had.”

Sidestepping a bit of black ice, Graves grasped Newt’s arm when the man’s boot failed to find traction and slid on the same spot. He tugged Newt up, closer. Green eyes--pupils dark and wide, reacting to the slight shock--flew to his and held. Pale fingers tightened on the sleeve of Graves’ coat, sinking into the black. 

“Th-thank you.” Scarcely more than a breath, one Graves felt intimately against his mouth, the words banished the morning’s bitterly cold bite. “I--” 

A ball of snow glanced off of Newt’s jaw, breaking apart on his shoulder.

Graves heard more than felt the next round hit his back, the children pelting them for all they were worth and giggling. He winked at Newt before turning, slowly, to level a dark glare at the pack. The children went quiet, watching as Graves stalked closer. A small matter to scrape a hand along the nearest railing, to crouch down in front of the littlest member of the group, freckles thick on her nose. He indicated the others with a look as he presented her with the tight snowball he’d made, and said, “Take care of this for me, will you?”

Her grin was quick and fierce, baring a noticeable gap in her teeth. Nodding, she rounded on her playmates with her arm pulled back, giving chase as they dashed back to the relative safety of their chosen stoop.

Newt’s smile was soft and warm and wholly for Graves. “That was excellent. You were--Rather, you _are_ \--” He dropped his gaze to the tight clutch of their footprints, outlined by the snow like it was chalk on the coated pavement. Cleared his throat as he thrust both hands deep into his pockets. “Shouldn’t we be going?”

He wouldn’t wonder too long, not just then, Graves decided, on what Newt had stopped himself from saying. On what thought had flushed his skin a shade the chill hadn’t managed to tease out. “Kowalski will be at work by now?”

“What? Oh. Yes,” Newt said, distracted still, “but it will only take me a moment to retrieve my case, as he wouldn’t have touched it.”

They covered the last block without conversation, Graves undeniably aware of Newt beside him; their elbows occasionally brushed, black against blue. Pickett shifted, settled. A comfortable if slight weight beside Graves’ wand.

At the mouth of an alley, Graves said, “Here.”

The smell was deliberate, aided by the overflowing trash bins lining the brick buildings rising up on either side. Meant to keep No-Maj’s clear of the Apparition site, the rot of months-old fruit and fish, along with the clutter--splintered wooden crates, an overturned produce cart, broken barrels--mostly did the job. 

Midway down, after they had cleared the bulk of the litter, Newt stilled. “Graves.”

“I hear it.”

The sound was high-pitched and unrelenting, worse than the dog whistle Newt had compared it to. Graves scanned the alley’s entrance, searched the crevices created by the debris. His gaze climbed the building to the roof as Newt’s fell to the ground, both combing the light for shadows. 

“The cold, just before it--”

Graves caught a flicker, the air momentarily wavering like a mirage. He moved, shoving his shoulder into Newt, knocking the man back. Behind him. Graves lifted his wand; ignoring the sound and the frigid cold, the sudden pain searing a jagged line down his chest to his abdomen, he bit out the spell. In the illuminating white light--before Newt latched onto his shoulder, before Apparition pulled at him, at them--Graves saw long, thick claws emerging from shadow.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For anyone who has newly found this fic, or for anyone revisiting it (you're wonderful, thank you), I've posted [a preview of the next chapter on my tumblr](http://shadowslament.tumblr.com/post/161526952438/ive-no-doubt-this-fic-has-well-and-truly-been). Still very much a work in progress, it's meant to be evidence of this fic being anything but abandoned. Thanks to all of those still here, still waiting!


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